Monthly Archives: September 2016

Gates of Vienna News Feed 9/28/2016

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For the first time during the presidency of Barack Hussein Obama, the Senate has overridden one of Mr. Obama’s vetoes. Congress had passed a bill that would allow the families of 9/11 victims to sue Saudi officials, and Mr. Obama had vetoed it. But now the bill will become law.

In other news, the leader of Catalonia says that his region will hold a referendum on independence, with or without the approval of the Spanish government.

To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.

Thanks to AF, Dean, Fjordman, JD, Nick, Reader from Chicago, Srdja Trifkovic, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

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The New Route to Europe

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Five years ago, during the first rush of the “Arab Spring”, the vast bulk of the migrants who attempted the sea crossing to Lampedusa came from Tunisia and Libya. Later, after the United States fomented the civil war in Syria, Syrian and Iraqi “refugees” became more numerous. When the Aegean became the preferred route, and especially after German Chancellor Angela Merkel invited all the Syrians to come, every Middle Eastern Muslim who wanted to come to Europe transformed himself into a “Syrian”.

Until recently, Egyptians were not prominent among the migrants. All that seems to be changing — a traffickers’ boat from Egypt recently capsized in the Mediterranean, and 162 people drowned. As always, this sort of story tugs the heartstrings of Westerners, and now the attention of the Gutmenschen is focused on Egypt.

Many thanks to JLH for translating this article from the Wiener Zeitung:

The New Route to Europe

By Birgit Svensson
September 18, 2016

Alexandria. Ibrahim is wearing a brown galabia, the traditional ankle-length robe of Egyptian men, and is gazing pensively at the Mediterranean Sea. Fishing boats are lined up like a pearl necklace, moving out to the open sea. We are halfway between Alexandria and Damietta, where the sand is at its finest, the sea at its calmest and only few swimmers are wandering about.

Fishing in the middle of the day? “No.” answers Ibrahim, “those are refugees.” At one time everyone here supported themselves by fishing, himself included. But since more and more people have been wanting to go to Europe, the refugee business has replaced the fishing business. He, too, sold his boat to human smugglers for a good price. Would he get back to fishing when the tide of refugees ebbed? He shrugs. At the moment, it doesn’t look like it, says the 54-year-old. Just the opposite. Trips across the Mediterranean have increased dramatically in recent weeks, since the Libyan coast is being more closely watched. It is more undisturbed east of Alexandria. He hasn’t seen any coast guards, and the local police look the other way. Ibrahim makes an unintelligible hand gesture: “Bakshish,” whispers the Egyptian — bribe money. And then: “For a long time now, it isn’t just Syrians and blacks from Somalia and Eritrea who want to get to Europe, but more and more Egyptians.”

Following the fisherman’s directions, we drive to Burg el Burullus, a fishing village that is said to have become a terminal for refugee boats. In an idyllic location, it has access to the sea as well as to the Nile, which has spread its delta widely, creating a small lake before the village. Hadi is sitting in a coffee house on the main street that runs straight through the village, enjoying his free time and drinking ice-cold karkade — dark red hibiscus tea.

He is a boat builder, like everyone here, says the 30-year-old. He proudly shows photos of yachts he has built and equipped for Gulf sheiks. At the moment, however, they are making a living by refitting fishing boats as refugee boats. These would then be taken beyond the twelve-mile limit, where they would be safe from the coast guard. When the boat is full, it will head to Italy.

“I Can’t Even Get Married on This Money”

Next morning, Hadi takes us to the harbor. There are hundreds of fishing boats of all sizes and in varying conditions. There is welding, hammering, painting. Right now, Hadi is refitting a middle-sized fishing boat, removing net ropes, fastening the pulleys and rolling up the cable.

When the renovation is done, maybe 400 people will fit in, says the ship builder. A smuggler would have to pay the ship owner between one and 1.5 million Egyptian pounds for that. A euro costs 12 pounds on the black market in Alexandria. Since the price of the trip must be paid to the smuggler in foreign currency, the rate rises steadily. The dangerous trip to Italy costs between 30,000 and 50,000 pounds.

Hadi earns 1,500 pounds a month. “With this money, I can’t even get married, let alone go to Lampedusa,” he comments. In going over the boat, he points out the open space on the foredeck. It clearly unsettles him that sometimes, in sight of the Italian coast, a hole is bored. Then, if the ship sinks, the passengers and the crew will be rescued by the Italian coast guard. That is what the smugglers calculate.

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Ahmed the Clock Boy’s Pop is Suing the Center for Security Policy

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Remember “Ahmed the Clock Boy”?

A little over a year ago, a young “Texan” lad named Ahmed Mohamed took the innards of an old electronic alarm clock to school in a briefcase. When the alarm clock alarmed the security guard — as young Ahmed must surely have known it would — he was briefly arrested.

In the months since, Ahmed’s family have milked the “clock” incident for all it’s worth. Every time their fifteen minutes have seemed to be up, and they have been given a well-deserved retirement to the ash heap of history, up they pop again in the media with some new publicity stunt.

Their latest stunt is a defamation lawsuit against Fox News, Glenn Beck, the Center for Security Policy, and others. The defendants are alleged to have gone on TV and said mean things about Ahmed and his family, thereby “defaming” them.

Below is the press release sent out today by CSP. David Yerushalmi and Robert Muise are two of the lawyers for the defense, which means the Mohamed family are in for a treat once this gets to into court. The defense — dare I say it? — will clean their clock:

Center Will Fight Frivolous Defamation Lawsuit by the Father — and Exploiter — of the ‘Clock Boy’

Washington, D.C.: The Center for Security Policy has learned from press accounts that it and its Executive Vice President Jim Hanson are among those named in a lawsuit filed in a Texas state court by Mohamed Mohamed, the father of Ahmed Mohamed. The younger Mohamed has been popularly known as the “Clock Boy” ever since he created a controversy by bringing to school a so-called “science project” that authorities described as indistinguishable from a crude timing device for a bomb.

The lawsuit alleges that Mr. Hanson, the Center, Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne, Fox News, Glenn Beck and Ben Shapiro “defamed” the elder Mohamed in the wake of the Clock Boy incident.

Mr. Hanson and the Center for Security Policy categorically reject this charge and will use every instrument at their disposal to challenge and thwart this transparent effort to penalize them for the exercise of freedom of speech informed by publicly available and factual information. To that end, they have retained the services of David Yerushalmi and Robert Muise of the American Freedom Law Center, a public interest law firm specializing in countering Islamist lawfare.

In response to the reports of the filing of the Mohamed lawsuit, Jim Hanson observed:

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Climate Change Warning

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The thunder rumbles, the clouds roil, and the lightning flashes are almost constant.

Those observations are not complaints, in fact it’s joyous news! My poor flower garden hasn’t had any real moisture for more than a month. I swan, I can hear the roses singing their alleluias from here…

…however, given the fragility of our internet connection in this kind of dramatic King Lear weather, we could well end up with no signal before too long. To y’all it will look as though we finally embarked on our long-delayed trip to the Azores. To us, it will mean bringing in the solar lights from the garden so we can have a bit of light to see us through to bedtime…

And then when the electricity does return, the Baron will end up on the phone arguing with customer “service” about our lack of connection. They argue because they don’t want to have to make a visit out here where there be dragons and the mod cons are more of a con than they are mod. However, this beta model they’re testing out on us hillbillies and bumpkins is much better than what went before it.

Just letting you know if your comment isn’t approved, try again later. Or maybe this time we won’t be disconnected at all. Wouldn’t that be nice??

Gates of Vienna News Feed 9/27/2016

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It is possible that up to 20,000 migrants could be turned out of Italy’s shelters and left to fend for themselves. Tens of thousands of asylum-seekers have accumulated in reception centers, and the government is running out of money to pay for their accommodation.

In other news, three people were beaten up at a swimming center in Helsinki after they acknowledged to their attackers that they were Finns. Police are puzzled as to the motive for the assaults.

To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.

Thanks to AF, JD, KGS, Nick, Reader from Chicago, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

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The Wayward Bus

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This article from Rhein Neckar Zeitung describes the travails of a culture-enriching bus driver in Germany who was thrust into the job with zero knowledge of the city’s bus routes.

Many thanks to Nash Montana for the translation:

Mannheim Bus strays through the city — driver didn’t know the way

Mannheim. One bus driver waits for running passengers, another doesn’t. One driver helps the elderly getting in, another one complains. Business as usual. But a bus driver being sent into the race completely ignorant of his schedule and his route is a new phenomenon. One reader told the RNZ about this very peculiar incident that took place in the late morning of August 26th.

“Even as I entered the bus, there was already a commotion. The passengers said the driver didn’t understand German and that he didn’t know the route,” Andre Holzheimer, who uses the line 710 regularly, explained. The line commutes between Brühl and the Mannheim Main train station and then goes back via Mannheim-Rheinau all the way to Schwetzingen-Hirschacker.

“The poor man was drenched in sweat and said that this was his first day as a bus driver. Apparently they just sent him off without any intensive training. I felt sorry for the man, who was obviously of Arab background. We had to keep telling him where the stops were and where he had to stop,” Holzheimer recounted. “The whole thing was reminiscent of a scavenger hunt.” Furthermore it was “the nastiest bus in all of Mannheim,” with numerous defects visible to the eye.

But what at first glance looked like sloppy employment soon revealed itself as an attempt to spare the bus passengers an even worse fate. “The commissioned subcontractor who supplies us with drivers was acting out of pure emergency,” Reinfried Vetter, Heidelberg chief comptroller of the BRN, justified the incident.

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ESW: The Threat to Free Speech in Europe

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In her intervention at OSCE/HDIM in Warsaw this morning, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff of Bürgerbewegung Pax Europa spoke about the increasing threat to free speech in Europe. Suppression of free speech has intensified since the “refugee” crisis began, because most of the migrants are Muslims, and Muslim lobbying against the criticism of Islam is what drives the initiatives to limit free speech.

Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading this video:

For links to previous articles about the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, see the OSCE Archives.

We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Definition!

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Greetings to Emusco from Bienna!

Last night we posted a report by the Counterjihad Collective about an EMISCO side event at this week’s OSCE/HDIM conference in Warsaw, “The Consequences of Islamophobic Discourse in the European Political Parties”. The hosts of the event were, naturally, Muslims, and the chairman was Bashy Quraishy, who is well-known any “Islamophobe” who has attended previous OSCE conferences.

We were pleasantly surprised this morning to find that Mr. Quraishy had dropped by and left a comment on that post. It seems that he subscribes to the time-honored maxim: “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” But he must have forgotten the corollary maxim: “I don’t care what you say about me, as long as you spell my name right.” In this case, he misspelled the name of his own organization (not to mention this blog’s eponymous city) in his comment:

Dear friends in Gates of Bienna
Thanks for your advertisement of Emisco’s event. It is so kind of you.
Here is a short video from the main session which might be beneficial for your readers.
Move Love
Bashy Quraishy
Secretary General — Emusco

Followed by a link to a Facebook post, which has since been removed: www.facebook.com/bashy.quraishy/posts/10154006682002075

So who is Bashy Quraishy? He is a “Danish” advocate for minority rights, and the General Secretary (or Secretary General, both versions of the title are extant) of EMISCO, the European Muslim Initiative for Social Cohesion. None of this would be of any concern to us, except that EMISCO partners with OSCE/HDIM, as do many other Muslim-European NGOs. Bashy Quraishy is a familiar fixture at OSCE events, with his trademark black beret and parti-colored trench coat (or scarf, I’m not sure which).

Mr. Quraishy has a website, www.bashy.dk, which proclaims its advocacy of “Human rights, Justice, and Freedom”. Am I caviling if I point out that those three terms have different meanings for Muslims than they do for non-Muslims? In Islam, “Human rights” means those rights enumerated by the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam — that is, all Islamic rights are defined by sharia law. “Justice” means the application of sharia law to all human activities. “Freedom” means being liberated from man-made (non-Muslim) law so that one lives entirely under the rule of sharia.

When dealing with Islam, everything comes down to sharia law, which is why “Islamophobes” journey to Warsaw to fight the encroachment of sharia in international bodies such as the OSCE. Islam likes to hide behind its status as a religion to avoid criticism, but in fact what we “Islamophobes” object to is Islamic law, which is a political system. The tenets of sharia, a.k.a. Political Islam, form the bulk of Islamic doctrine.

So how does EMISCO promote social cohesion? When Bashy Quraishy appears on a podium with a “partner” from a progressive non-Muslim group, he is full of sunshine and rainbows and peace for all mankind. He can reel out hours of the usual platitudes that Muslims keep handy to snow the infidel. Everything is all multicultural and “interfaith”.

But if you probe beneath the surface and try to talk about what devout Muslims really believe in, the jackboots and truncheons appear. Yesterday, at Session 11 of the plenary HDIM meeting in Warsaw, Mr. Quraishy had this to say about people who criticize Islamic doctrines:

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No Need to Define “Islamophobia” — Just Criminalize It

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Last night we posted a report by the Counterjihad Collective on an EMISCO side event at this year’s OSCE/HDIM conference in Warsaw. Below is a follow-up intervention by Stephen Coughlin of Unconstrained Analytics, describing the frightening absurdities he heard at yesterday’s side event.

Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading this video:

For links to previous articles about the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, see the OSCE Archives.

Gates of Vienna News Feed 9/26/2016

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The State Department has warned travelers who may be considering Turkey as a destination that it is currently considered unsafe for Americans. There are indications that terrorists are targeting hotels in Turkey that are indentified as part of American chains.

In other news, a lawyer reportedly dressed in a period Nazi uniform shot and wounded nine people in a Houston strip mall this morning before being shot dead by police.

To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.

Thanks to AF, Dean, DV, JD, MM, Reader from Chicago, Srdja Trifkovic, Upananda Brahmachari, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

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Geert Wilders: “This is About the Very Existence of the Netherlands!”

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Last Wednesday Geert Wilders, the leader of the Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid, PVV) in the Netherlands stood before the lower house of the Dutch Parliament (the Tweede Kamer) and spoke against Islamization and mass immigration into the Netherlands. He was interrupted repeatedly by several members of parliament from various left-wing parties, who persisted in ankle-biting him all the way through his speech.

The video below shows the entire event, including all the interruptions and Mr. Wilders’ responses. For the mammoth job of translating and timing the audio, H. Numan deserves our undying gratitude. And we also owe a debt of thanks to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Transcript:

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EMISCO and the Ongoing Push Against “Islamophobia” by the OSCE

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The following report was written by the Counterjihad Collective after several members attended an EMISCO side event today at the OSCE/HDIM conference in Warsaw.

This morning’s side event “The Consequences of Islamophobic Discourse in the European Political Parties” was hosted by EMISCO and chaired by Bashy Quraishy, the General Secretary of EMISCO (European Muslim Initiative for Social Cohesion). the panel was top-heavy with speakers giving country reports on Islamophobia in Europe.. The presentations seemed forced and overloaded in the sense that little time was able to be allotted for questions.

The forum was structured so that the closing statements, given by Bülent Şenay, were delivered after the question-and-answer period to ensure a final word. The panel seemed defensive, with panel members making strident statements about various political parties, labeling them as “racist” and “Islamophobic”. Building on narratives emphasized in 2014, their efforts were aimed at escalating the Islamophobia rhetoric in the guise of racism and gender, with all of the women appearing in head coverings, amid a constant reference to the wearing of headscarves. Also of note was a peculiar omission: the materials associated with side event did not provide the names of the briefers.

Because EMISCO and the Turkish complement were force to acknowledge that the term “Islamophobia” lacks a definition, this question was presented again in this forum. The other question concerned the definition of “new form of racism not based on skin color” and “manifestations of racism” as well. The panel did not answer the question on racism. Quraishy answered that Islamophobia was not about reasonable disagreements. In his closing remarks, however, Bülent Şenay became visibly agitated, went off his prepared notes (he said) and forcefully declared that our asking the question was both Islamophobic and ridiculous because “we all know what it means” and hence “I won’t define it.” He went on to insist, however, that “we must define Islamophobia as a crime.” Of course, defining Islamophobia is an issue because criminalizing an activity that lacks a definition is a serious civil rights and verges on the criminalization of thought.

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Clare Lopez on Violent Islamic Anti-Semitism in Europe

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In her intervention at OSCE/HDIM in Warsaw this afternoon, Clare Lopez of the Center for Security Policy referred to this paragraph from the annotated agenda for this year’s conference:

On the other hand, efforts to prevent bias motivated violence and discrimination will be ineffective if they are not based on a sound understanding of what motivates perpetrators. In addition to a clear and punitive criminal justice response, challenging intolerant and extreme discourse, discouraging young people from joining hate groups, and promoting tolerance, understanding and respect through education are all crucial to avoiding social conditions which lead to hate crimes.

Below is the video of her intervention. Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading this video:

For links to previous articles about the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, see the OSCE Archives.

Carl Lang: “They Dominate Only Because We Submit”

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Carl Lang is the president of the Parti de la France, which he formed in 2009 after leaving the Front National.
In the following speech given near the Eiffel Tower, Mr. Lang spoke out against Islamization and the destruction of the French national identity, and called for the formation of a civilian national guard of 100,000 armed men.

Many thanks to Ava Lon for the timing, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Transcript:

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